Transforming the Housing Industry: A New Vision for Sustainable Homebuilding

Our mission at Aera is to create human habitats that contribute to the sustainability of the global ecosystem. Our housing, and the infrastructure that supports it, reflect a globalized mindset where consumers demand more: more consumer goods, more energy, more square footage with little care over where or how they are produced. This mindset has resulted in a housing stock that is a primary contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions and the devastation of local ecosystems.

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The Environmental Impact of Traditional Housing

Our buildings contribute 40% of total greenhouse gas emissions and single-family homes make up 60% of all square footage in the United States.

The resulting increase in natural disasters coupled with ongoing supply chain disruptions have laid bare the fragility of the infrastructure that powers our everyday lives, forcing us to reprioritize. In the future we will not ask how much but where did it come from? How was it made? Sustainability will be our priority but not sustainability in a narrow sense. Sustainability will be redefined to include ecological sustainability, economic sustainability, social sustainability and resiliency. The sustainable home for our future will empower homeowners by providing control over their resource usage, freedom from the hassles of homeownership, and resiliency in the face of climate change.

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The Evolution of Consumer Needs and Home Design

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The average American home is a stick framed 2,273 square foot, three bedroom, two bath house built in 1983.

When these homes were built households were larger, they relied on fossil fuels to directly power their everyday lives and household members spent most of their day outside of the home. The picture is very different today. Households are smaller, the average household size has shrunk from 5 in 1900 to 2.6 in 2018. Household members are spending more time at home. And our lives are increasingly electric. Due to heat pump technology and mass-produced electric vehicles, it is now more affordable to heat/cool our homes and power our automobiles using electricity.

These paradigm shifts are reflected in consumer preferences, homeowners want to spend their workdays in better quality homes and the costs of powering our houses is becoming ever more important with our increased reliance on electricity.

According to a survey completed by the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB), 64% of households say they would prefer a high-quality, smaller home while only 34% said they would choose a larger house with fewer amenities. Of the most important amenities to homebuyers’ energy efficiency, low maintenance, low operating costs, and durability/resiliency all ranked in the top 5.

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The Housing Industry’s Failure to Keep Up

Despite these macro changes the building industry is still emphasizing square footage over quality and features. Less than 10% of new homes built in the U.S. are certified as energy efficient. Home maintenance costs in the U.S. are increasing at a rapid rate. We will need to add over 30 million home electric chargers by 2030. And fewer than 4% of homes in the U.S. have solar panels. New homes built today are designed for the household of 1983.

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Homebuilders continue to emphasize size over features and quality because the former is cheap and easy to demonstrate while the latter is expensive and hard to quantify. If we are going to deliver sustainable homes for our future at a price comparable to the homes of today, we will need to offset higher material costs, through lower labor costs. Many modular companies have promised to reduce home prices by reducing labor costs and overall cycle times.

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Why Modular Housing is the Future—And Why It Hasn’t Worked Yet

Modular has the potential to speed up construction by as much as 50% and reduce costs by 20%, however neither of those milestones have been consistently achieved. Modular’s inability to live up to its potential is twofold.

Firstly, many systems focus on “modularizing” the structure of the home even though the building structure typically takes the shortest amount of time and requires the least amount of skilled labor to complete. Whether completed in the factory or on site most modular companies complete the most complex, time-consuming construction activities (interior finishes, exterior finishes, and mechanical/electrical/plumbing systems) using manual labor and traditional techniques. The failure of most modular approaches to automate and modularize these processes leaves a huge amount of potential savings on the table.

Secondly a modular manufacturer is not in control of the entire building process; they are often slotted in as a party to a complex and disparate group responsible for delivery of the home. This causes issues with logistics, coordination, and installation. To truly productize home construction a single entity must develop and be responsible for the entire process from design to fabrication to installation.

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Aera’s Approach to Productized, Sustainable Housing

At Aera, our approach to productizing the construction of sustainable housing is to create a truly distributed manufacturing system. Our distributed manufacturing system features a library of home designs which are prefabricated in our facility using a “pod and panel” modular building approach. Our homes are then shipped to site where low-cost labor is used to install the home without the need for specialty trades. We are taking the assembly line out of our facility and extending it to the project site, while keeping it all under the Aera umbrella.

The Core of Our System: Pod and Panel Modular Approach

The foundation of our distributed manufacturing system is our pod and panel modular approach. We seek to avoid the logistical challenges of volumetric modular while pre-fabricating as much of the home as possible. Prefabricated wall and roof panels are constructed in our facility using cross laminated timber as the basis of our structure. Our modular wall and roof assemblies include pre-installed interior finishes, windows and doors, electrical, plumbing and HVAC systems. Our modular assemblies are installed around our volumetric mechanical pods. Our mechanical pods are the core of each of our home designs. They include the bathroom a kitchen wall and most of the main electrical and mechanical equipment in the home. Each pod is kept to strict dimensions to ship using standard trucking. By taking this pod and panel approach we can pre-fabricate all the most complicated aspects of the home while keeping our designs flexible and our logistical complexity low.

We have developed a relatively small number of home models which will be offered with non-structural add-ons and options to create differentiation for the end consumer. Each model undergoes a product development process like most consumer products, every component of the home is specified, engineered, and optimized for manufacture and assembly either in the factory or onsite. Each home is manufactured in our facility through automated production processes. Complete modular assemblies are sent out to site where the assembly of the home is completed without construction drawings. Step-by-step instructions are provided which can be followed by laborers certified in Aera Systems home construction. Any component of the home including interior finishes and MEP (Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing) systems which haven’t been pre-installed in the factory will be assembled using UL listed connectors and components eliminating the need for trade labor.

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Creating Homes with Purpose and Design Integrity

Aera homes will demonstrate that ecologically responsible housing is better housing. Each one of our homes will be placed in a human scale, naturally landscaped community designed to create a sense of place and connection to the local environment. Appropriately sized floorplans will reduce unnecessary energy usage and wasted space. In exchange for square footage, we will thoughtfully design every space using natural materials and modernist design principles to create more value per square foot. Cross laminated timber construction, standing seam metal roofs, and thoroughly engineered construction details will result in homes capable of withstanding extreme weather events while lasting for generations.

Built for Efficiency and Energy Independence

Each home will be designed from the ground up to produce and distribute energy. Passive House inspired construction details will drastically reduce the energy needs of the home making most of our homes capable of “net zero” energy usage with the integration of solar power and a battery backup system. A smart energy distribution network will provide homeowners with unparalleled insight into how energy is being produced and used in the home. A fresh air ventilation system and intelligent climate control will create a level of indoor comfort and air quality unheard of outside of custom luxury homes.

Making Homeownership Easier and More Reliable

All these features will be combined with a long-term service and maintenance package which will reduce home maintenance to a small, consistent fee. The home for our future will become our support system, looking after us and the environment instead of the other way around.

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Our journey to create sustainable housing on a scale which has a truly global impact will be a long one. But we believe the time has truly come for a revolution in the homebuilding industry. The market demands it, technology now enables it, and we are willing to take the risk of executing it.

Please join us as we go on this journey. Whether it is by purchasing an Aera Home, following us on various platforms, working with us or partnering with us we are excited to have you along as we build the sustainable homes for our future.

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